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Daily News
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Spike Wins Battle of Star Wars
Network to shell out between $65 and $70 million for exclusive rights to all
six films in the Star Wars franchise.
Friday, October 21, 2005
By Dennis Michael
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20th Century Fox
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Star Wars gang heads to Spike TV
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The Force is strong with Spike TV…but it cost them somewhere between $65 and $70 million. That's the fee Spike paid to get the broadcast rights to all six of the Star Wars films exclusively for six years, according to Daily Variety.
Not surprisingly, it's the biggest movie purchase in the 22-year history of the network. A few months ago, experts were speculating that the offered deal would bring in about $50 million, but that's before a bidding battle: Universal units USA Network and the Sci Fi Channel were in the auction, as were the Turner networks TBS and TNT, and that drove the price up.
The big prize in the package is Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. Spike gets the first broadcast run of the final title in the saga when the network window opens in April 2008.
The galactic fee paid by Spike TV is its biggest movie purchase, but they've paid big bucks for exclusives before. Five years ago, just before Spike changed its name from The National Network, they dropped $364 million for the rights to most of Paramount's Star Trek franchises: Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, plus the first five theatricals.
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